'The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan' gives insight into the folklore of Palestine, the character of Rabbinic thought in New Testament times, and the views of the Pharisees and their successors on man's relationships with himself, his ...

One of the best-known principles of halakha is that Shabbat is violated to save a life. Who does this saving and how do we know that a life is in danger? What categories of illness violate Shabbat and who decides? A historical-sociological analysis of the roles played by Jew, non-Jew, and physician according to the approach of “medical cosmology” can help us understand the differences in the approach of the Shulchan Aruch compared to later decisors (e.g., the Mishnah Berurah). Such (...) differences illuminate how premodern medical triage coexisted with a different halakhic understanding than that of the biomedical age. (shrink)

In contemporary bioethics, the autonomy of the patient has assumed considerable importance. Progressing from a more limited notion of informed consent, shared decision making calls upon patients to voice the desires and preferences of their authentic self, engaging in choice among alternatives as a way to exercise deeply held values. One influential opinion in Jewish bioethics holds that Jewish law, in contradistinction to secular bioethics, limits the patient's exercise of autonomy only in those instances in which treatment choices are sensitive (...) to preferences. Here, we analyze a discussion in the Mishna, a foundational text of rabbinic Judaism, regarding patient autonomy in the setting of religiously mandated fasting, and commentaries in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, finding both a more expansive notion of such autonomy and a potential metaphysical grounding for it in the importance of patient self-knowledge. (shrink)

Anticipating Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen said we must recognize the living, breathing individual as a “Thou,” and not just as a generic example of humanity. As significant as the universal ethical ideal is for Cohen, he recognized that ethics is concerned with individuals only insofar as they are members of humanity as a whole. Ethics can’t always deal with individual moral feelings or with sin. In other words, it is religion -- rather than ethics -- that concerns itself with the (...) sin of the individual. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen made a distinction between the logic of science and the ideal of ethics, and noted that the natural world and the world of ethics are perceived very differently. This is because the order of the physical world is unchangeable (e.g, the sun sets in the west, night follows day, etc), while in the ideal world ethical rules can be accepted or rejected. It seems there should be one explanation for science, which is empirically self-evident, and another for ethics, (...) which is something that is open to debate. Cohen reasoned there must be something that allows science and ethics to coexist and interrelate. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen agreed with Immanuel Kant that ethics must be directed towards the well-being of humanity. The essential feature of this is its universality. As Cohen saw it, progress was (or at least ought to be) moving towards universal suffrage and democratic socialism. Following Kant, Cohen defended the so-called categorical imperative; that we should treat humanity in other persons always as an end and never as a means only. (Kant’s famous definition of the categorical imperative is to “act only according (...) to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”). (shrink)

After a section of Methodological Preliminaries, I consider Truth and Argumentation in the Jewish Legal Tradition, under the following subheadings: Truth in Judaism, Truth and Norms, Truth and Language, Truth and Logic, Truth and Argumentation. I thus use an external framework in order to pose questions to the Jewish legal tradition, and identify internal resources which may provide partial answers to these questions. But are these partial answers so peculiar, theological, culturally contingent as to lack any value in terms of (...) a potential contribution to these same issues as posed within Western jurisprudence? This may be doubted, given the West’s adoption or construction of the divine right of kings on the one hand and of holistic theories of interpretation on the other, derived from the Bible and later Jewish tradition, mediated and fortified through a Christianised Rome. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask whether mishpat ivri (Jewish Law) is appropriately conceived as a “legal system”. I review Menachem Elon’s use of a “Sources” Theory of Law (based on Salmond) in his account of Mishpat Ivri; the status of religious law from the viewpoint of jurisprudence itself (Bentham, Austin and Kelsen); then the use of sources (and the approach to “dogmatic error”) by halakhic authorities in discussing the problems of the agunah (“chained wife”), which I suggest points to a (...) theory more radical than the “sources” theory of law, one more akin to the ultimate phase of the thought of Kelsen (the “non-logical” Kelsen) or indeed to some form of Legal Realism (with which that phase of Kelsen’s thought has indeed been compared)? I finally juxtapose an account based on internal theological resources (a “Jurisprudence of Revelation”). Downloadable at at http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/jsij1.html. (shrink)

This response to the articles of Luzzati and Broekman (in this issue) addresses principally the character of early rabbinic legal interpretation, as viewed by the Rabbis themselves. It considers, with examples, their concept of "simple meaning'' (peshat), its place within their overall hermeneutic system and its theological presuppositions. The second section responds more briefly to thetheoretical critiques of Luzzati and Broekman, stressing that (my version of) semiotics is descriptive rather than normative; resists the reduction of textual meaning to interpretation; and (...) refuses to equate decision-making with justification. (shrink)

Jewish law has a history stretching from the early period to the modern State of Israel, encompassing the Talmud, Geonic and later codifications, the Spanish Golden Age, medieval and modern responsa, the Holocaust and modern reforms. Fifteen distinct periods are separately studied in this volume, each one by a leading specialist, and the emphasis throughout is on the development of the institutions and sources of the law.

“Brother Daniel” (Oswald Rufeisen) was a Jew with an extraordinary record of resistance to the Nazis in the 2WW, who ultimately took refuge in a monastery and became a Catholic priest, After the war he sought to emigrate to Israel and to claim citizenship as a Jew under Israel’s Law of Return. This article examines the judgments in the case, in part from a semiotic analysis of the opposition between Jew and Christian in the judgments, as well as their construction (...) of time in the context of the religious identity of the “Jewish state”. (shrink)

Here are the most significant ethical writings of the 12th-century philosopher, physician, and master of rabbinical literature—newly translated from the original sources by noted Maimonides scholars Raymond L. Weiss and Charles E. Butterworth. Among these are the first English versions of Eight Chapters and the Letter to Joseph. Other selections include Laws Concerning Character Traits, Treatise on the Art of Logic, and gleanings from Maimonides’ medical writings. Introduction. Notes.

Jewish ethics like Judaism itself has often been charged with being "particularistic," and in modernity it has been unfavorably compared with the universality of secular ethics. This charge has become acute philosophically when the comparison is made with the ethics of Kant. However, at this level, much of the ethical rejection of Jewish particularism, especially its being beholden to a God who is above the universe to whom this God prescribes moral norms and judges according to them, is also a (...) rejection of Christian (or any other monotheistic) ethics, no matter how otherwise universal. Yet this essay argues that Jewish ethics that prescribes norms for all humans, and that is knowable by all humans, actually constitutes a wider moral universe than does Kantian ethics, because it can include non-rational human objects and even non-human objects altogether. This essay also argues that a totally egalitarian moral universe, encompassing all human relations, becomes an infinite, totalizing universe, which can easily become the ideological justification (ratio essendi) of a totalitarian regime. (shrink)

This essay offers a Jewish approach to ethnography in religious ethics. Following the work of other ethnographers working in religious ethics, I explore how an ethnographic account of reproductive ethics among Haredi Jewish women in Jerusalem enhances and improves Jewish ethical discourse. I argue that ethnography should become an integral part of Jewish ethics for three reasons. First, with a contextual approach to guidance and application of law and norms, an ethnographic approach to Jewish ethics parallels the way ethical decisions (...) are made on a daily basis in Jewish communities. Second, ethnography bolsters the voices of those involved in ethical discourse. Third, ethnography facilitates the bridge between local ethical questions and global ethical discourse. (shrink)

Although the role of ethics in modern Jewish thought has been widely explored, major works by foundational philosophers remain largely absent from such discussions. This essay contributes to the recovery of these voices, focusing on the Hebrew writings of Moses Mendelssohn and Nachman Krochmal. I argue that these texts reveal the existence of a shared ethical project animating these founding philosophical voices of Jewish modernity, and that reconstructing their claims contributes to broader conversations about the relationship between ethics and law. (...) Mendelssohn and Krochmal present Jewish law as addressing needs emerging from the history of moral philosophy—from the modern histories of Platonic and Aristotelian ethics. Moreover, my reading highlights these thinkers’ ongoing relevance, suggesting that their work illuminates the role of law in ethical cultivation. (shrink)

This article addresses the notion of bearing witness and the responsibility bore by the witness, by a careful reading of Emmanuel Levinas's writings. According to Levinas, one of the major experiences of modern man, is the preference of being a "witness" than being a "participant." The phenomenological investigation of bearing witness reveals the witness's involvement in the act and the occurrence that he witnessed. My aim here is to better understand the modern human condition, in which the encounter between the (...) subject and reality takes place through the mediation of technology. To this end, we consider both the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, which concerns itself with the condition of the Dasein, its sense of being out-of-place in the world, and the authentic manner in which it seeks to overcome this feeling, and that of Levinas, who offers a different perspective focusing on issues of the ethics and responsibility stemming from the encounter between the person and that which lies beyond him. To understand how man uses technology to mediate reality we also consider the enlightening phenomenological and sociological work of Susan Sontag, which, in its exposure of the passion to bear witness, provokes reflection on various aspects of control, curiosity, and involvement. All this facilitates a better understanding of Levinas's conception of bearing witness and the manner in which he demands responsibility and ethicality of the individual not merely as a witness to reality but also–by virtue of his bearing witness–as a partner to it. (shrink)

This study attempts to provide access to the thinking about poverty and the poor reflected in classic rabbinic literature, focusing on a single passage in Leviticus Rabbah that addresses the verse (Lev. 25:25) beginning “should your brother come to ruin.” This passage affords us an opportunity to take a penetrating look into the meaning of poverty, and into its theological and metaphysical contexts, which lie beyond the social and economic issue of poverty. Rabbinic literature comes to us in a variety (...) of genres, which address matters of law, of exegesis, and of midrashic interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Traditionally we distinguish between halakhic and aggadic midrash, between those midrashic interpretations that seek to reveal biblical law (as the halakhah of Judaism) and those that seek to probe the biblical narrative and reveal the thinking and philosophy behind them. The midrash we will study and examine in this article is part of the collection known as Leviticus Rabbah, an anthology of sermons from the Land of Israel, in Hebrew and Galilean Aramaic, on the book of Leviticus. It appears that the version of Leviticus Rabbah now extant includes an ancient collection from the third century CE, to which were added Amoraic sermons from the fourth and fifth centuries. (shrink)

One of the riddles that enthrall those who study modern Jewish thought is how Maimonides attained such high stature among thinkers so far removed from one another – medievals and moderns, rationalists and mystics. One may fairly say that Maimonides was the religious and philosophical anchor for a stunning variety of thinkers, but it appears that more than they seek to understand Maimonides’ views, they find in him an ethical and religious model that enables them to create and formulate their (...) own innovative ethical teachings. I will seek to demonstrate that just as Maimonides provides the anchor for these thinkers’ independent creative work, their great admiration for him comes to define, in the final analysis, the limits of the philosophy that they offer. This is no simple matter. It has far-reaching implications, marking off the horizon of those philosophers’ thought. The example through which I shall present those limits is that of Eros – religious Eros and attitudes toward the body and sexuality in modern Jewish thought. In order to highlight the sense of indebtedness and loyalty to Maimonides and the limits set by that sense in modern Jewish thought, this study examines Spinoza’s attitude to love and Eros and the critique of that position by Hermann Cohen, followed by consideration of the problematic indications of limitation in both thinkers. These inquiries require first some attention to the status of Eros in religious thought and to the tension between the Spinozean position on Eros, with its exoteric significance, and the position taken by Hermann Cohen. Both of these thinkers express a preference for intellectual love over erotic love – a surprising similarity that indicates the horizons that were closed off to them because of the limits they imposed on themselves by accepting the authority of Maimonides. -/- . (shrink)

The 23rd volume in the respected series Ô Basic Bioethics’, this book contains seven original and two reprinted essays and a substantial introductory chapter by the editor. The main concern of the editor, and of several contributors, is to dispel the view that organised reli- gion has been consistently hostile to new biomedical developments. Instead, they emphasise that the practice of medicine is endorsed by the Church and by Jewish tradition. In principle, germline mod- ification might count as an extension (...) of medicine. A consensus emerges in the volume that germline modification would be accept- able if it could be developed and applied with safety and social equity, without destroying any human embryos, and if conducted purely for therapeutic purposes rather than for any form of genetic enhancement. (shrink)

According to Emmanuel Levinas, the individual bears an infinite obligation to the other person. In the Talmudic reading “Judaism and revolution,” Levinas suggests that we move from the ethical encounter to social relationships using contracts—both particular contracts and the social contract. So social relationships are created by limiting obligation, and as a result these relationships can only be practically acceptable, not ethical. Jewish religious practice for Levinas should also be understood as a set of negotiated limits to our infinite obligation.